Southern California Gains Prominence as Tech Hub
Published Jul 08, 2008
Internet giant Yahoo may be headquartered up north in the Silicon Valley, but it has a significant presence on busy Sunset Boulevard down south.
Information-technology conferences are fairly common occurrences in major cities around the globe, but you can bet that when Los Angeles gets in on the act, nothing is common about it.
The City of Los Angeles Technology & Education Summit is scheduled for Nov. 12, 2008, and the event’s organizer says the city is doing it right, combining traditional economic development sessions with a prime opportunity to interest high school students in high-tech careers.
“The student component is a whole different avenue for us, and we’re very excited about this,” says Wes Sherman, president and chief executive officer of Oregon-based Paramount World Group. Paramount specializes in organizing info-tech conferences at sites across the country, each one usually dubbed The IT Summit.
After hosting its first IT Summit in 2007, the city chose to expand the conference’s mission. In the invitation from the mayor’s office to area businesses, Los Angeles’ chief technology officer, Randi Levin, set forth the 2008 event’s goals: “propagate economic development,” “grow the city’s IT infrastructure” and “provide hands-on learning for the students.” About 200 youths from disadvantaged homes will be among those selected to participate.
“In future years, we plan to take over the whole Los Angeles Convention Center, which is just massive, and we’re talking about thousands of students and many thousands of attendees for the traditional adult component,” Sherman says.
STEP ASIDE, BOSTON
While the motion picture industry, which certainly boasts its own technology sectors, may be Los Angeles’ signature business, LA is a hotbed for a broad array of tech-related enterprises. In fact, Southern California has eclipsed the Boston region and today ranks second behind Northern California’s Silicon Valley in the amount of money raised from tech-minded venture capitalists.
The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. has identified scientific and technical services – from computer software design to medical research – as one of the city’s top sectors for growth through 2009. That’s no surprise considering the success of such SoCal technology giants as MySpace, Northrop Grumman and DirecTV.
“People will assume that the motion picture industry is the largest industry in Los Angeles County. It is not, based on employment. Other people will say, ‘What about tourism?’ It’s a sizable industry, but we say the basic industry of Los Angeles County is creativity,” says Jack Kyser, LAEDC economist. He points to the nearly 200 institutions of higher learning and nine engineering schools as fuel for that creativity. “It’s all flowing together and cross-fertilizing,” Kyser says.
William C. Allen, LAEDC president and CEO, knows about creativity. The son of legendary Hollywood couple Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, Allen says “the creativity that exists in the innovative sectors of aerospace and entertainment is the foundation upon which the LA economy was built.”
What’s next? “California has benefited enormously from information technology, biotechnology and now nanotechnology waves. We believe the next wave will be in clean technology,” Allen predicts. “To meet our state’s ambitious environmental goals, California will require technological innovation.”
Perhaps one of the students at November’s summit will someday unlock a clean-technology solution to a daunting environmental problem.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
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